Cardbomb: #remarkable you

Saturday, October 7, 2017

World Card Making Day Blog Hop 2017

Hey Everybody! Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm so excited to have you here today because today is World Card Making Day! Pretty great day if you're asking me. To celebrate the occasion I am blog hopping with a phenomenally talented group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators. Just wait until you see what everyone has made...

For my card I decided to do some gold heat embossing along with some watercoloring. I've been doing a lot of this lately but it's hard to stop when the results can be so stunning. My flower image is from the Remarkable You Stamp Set and it is perfect for watercoloring because of the big, full leaves.

I used Melon Mambo and Daffodil Delight inks on the petals and Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy on the stem and leaf. These are some of my favorite color combos for watercoloring because they blend into the most spectacular colors. I heat embossed my sentiment in gold on vellum. Then I layered it on top of a piece of Whisper White Cardstock, Gold Foil and a Whisper White background that was dry embossed with the Garden Trellis Embossing Folder. I added Black Metallic Thread and Iridescent Sequins to finish the card off.

The sentiment is from the Rose Wonder Stamp Set (so many great sentiments in that set). My card base is Thick Whisper White with a mat of Basic Black cardstock.

I've made a video tutorial on how I watercolored this flower. If you haven't tried watercoloring before I hope that the tips I share in the video will help you get off to a good start. Enjoy!

As always, I'm thrilled to have you stop by my blog. I hope you've enjoyed my card and video today. If you're ready to see some incredible creations from the other artists on this blog hop then please click the next button and head on over to my incredibly talented friend over in Canada... The fabulous Carolynn Sander!

Thanks again for stopping by! See you soon!

Maria.

BLOG ROLL:

Anja Luft

Brian King 

Sue Plote  

Maria Willis: You are Here.

Carolynn Sander 

Charlet Mallett 

Natalie Lapakko 

Jay Soriano 

Rochelle Blok  

Cheryll Miller 

Jenny Hall 

Amy Koenders 

Kelly Kent 

Paula Dobson  

Lee Conrey  

Janneke de Jong 

Cathy Caines  

Holly Stene 

Jessie Holton

Need more stamps now? Never fear! I've got you covered!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Art Inspiration

Hello, hello, hello everybody! In case you can't already tell I am so excited to share today's post and blog hop with you. Today I am hopping with the Creating Kindness Design Team and, as always, we have both a blog and a video hop for you today. Our theme is Art Inspiration and it is seriously one of the best and most inspiring challenges that I have ever participated in. All of us have selected one piece of art and created our work based off of that piece. After you check out my card and video today I hope you'll click the next button and continue the hop to see all of the amazing art pieces my team mates have dreamed up.

Here's the watercolor piece that I had so much fun creating after I finally settled on just one inspiration piece. That was seriously the hardest part of this challenge. I found so many inspiring pieces that it took me quite a while to pick just one.

Originally, I had planned to use street art as my inspiration. There is so much amazing street art out there and it's a realm that many aren't familiar with. So, I wanted to share street art since I really do love it. And then... I stumbled across this gorgeous piece by Maud Durland. She is not an artist that I had been familiar with but WOWZA!! Check her out if you have time because she is amazing! Here's a link to her site: Maud Durland's Website Needless to say, when I saw these tulips they took my breath away and I knew that this would be my inspiration piece.

I decided to use one of the flowers from the Remarkable You stamp set and I heat embossed the image multiple times in gold. Yes, before you ask, this required some serious masking. I stamped multiple flowers onto post-it notes and fussy cut them out. I stamped and embossed my flower images starting at the bottom of my card to make it look like the flowers were right in front of me. Every time a flower got embossed, it got masked off with a post-it note flower so that I could stamp another flower "behind" it without overlapping my images. Let me know if you have any questions about this process. You can see the result in this close-up below as some of the flowers appear to be "in the front."

I absolutely love watercoloring flowers. I think that my favorite color combination is Daffodil Delight and Melon Mambo. These two colors blend together to make the most fabulous, vibrant colors. Every single flower on this card, no matter how different they all look, was painted with only these two colors. If you're interested in seeing how I blend the colors I hope you'll watch the video tutorial that I've made. You'll find it at the end of my post.

In Maud's painting she has some greens towards the bottom but no sky. This is where I decided to deviate a bit. This flower image is large and I was worried that if I crowded the flowers together the beautiful details of each flower could get lost in the next. That meant leaving some space between the flowers which of course needed to be painted as well. The lower part of the card including the stems of the flowers was painted in a combination of Tempting Turquoise, Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy. Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy are my favorite greens to mix when watercoloring and the addition of Tempting Turquoise added some depth and tied the greenery into the blue sky.

If you've never watercolored before it may seem a bit daunting but it can really be easy if you just know a couple of things before you start. I've made this Watercoloring Tips & Tutorial video in hopes that it might help someone who is hoping to start watercoloring and just needed a little nudge.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment below! If you watercolor something gorgeous I would love to see it! Shoot me an email at mariawillis@hotmail. com

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. It's always a pleasure to have you. I hope you will continue on this hop by clicking the next button below. If you do you'll be heading over to my talented friend Jenny Hall!

Have an awesome day! See you all soon.